Education Week - January 21, 2015 - S18

S16 |
EDUCATION WEEK n
January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
CONTINUED FROM PAGE S15
"What we see is that when teachers are
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included in decisionmaking processes, when
they are included as leaders, the broader set
of teachers in the school feel like the decisionmaking
is more transparent and inclusive,"
Mr. Thompson said. "They feel valued, they are
more likely to feel that the school is a place
where the principals care about teachers [and]
listen to their voices."
In Marion County, Fla., individual principals
examine their schools' needs and try to match
those needs with their teachers' strengths.
Jayne Ellspermann, the principal of West
Port High School in Marion County and the
2015 National Principal of the Year, actively
invites talented teachers to shoulder additional
responsibilities outside the classroom,
based on their expertise, interests, and career
goals. Fourteen of Ms. Ellspermann's former
teachers have gone on to become principals.
One, Benjamin Whitehouse, who Ms. Ellspermann
hired as a world history teacher
in his first year out of graduate school, is
now principal of the district's North Marion
High School.
After learning that Mr. Whitehouse was interested
in administration, Ms. Ellspermann helped
him try out different hats-from club adviser, to
testing coordinator, athletic coach, and eventually
assistant principal in charge of discipline.
"It was much easier for me stepping into my
first year [as a full-fledged principal] because
I had done pretty much every job there was
to do in high school at that point," Mr. Whitehouse
said.
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as a steppingstone for future principals, others
see them as inherently important roles that
should exist at every school and that are critical
to building strong, successful schools.
In the Camas district, for example, administrators
leaned on teacher-leaders to draft the
district's template for writing and measuring
student-growth goals, which are required
under Washington state's teacher-evaluation
system. Without the teacher-leaders, the task
would have fallen on principals, who were
already juggling a host of other duties, said
Ms. Boerke, the principal of Camas' Liberty
Middle School.
There was also another positive outcome
from using teacher-leaders: The resulting
model was accepted by teachers because they
had devised the framework, the time frame
for evaluation, and the tools of evidence that
would be used, she said.
Ms. Boerke said teachers can also lead professional
development in ways that administrators
cannot. By relying more on the expertise
of their teachers, Ms. Boerke said she has
additional time to observe what is happening
in the classrooms.
"Now I can go in and see what the teachers
are doing, knowing very well what their
growth goals are," Ms. Boerke said. "And I
can give them just-in-time feedback on maybe
tweaking an assessment or asking a question
in a different way to get to what I know their
learning goal is."
"I just love my work again," Ms. Boerke
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said. "If we want to retain principals, this is
what we need to do-it's share the workload,
share the responsibility for teaching and
learning. ... When those test scores come out,
I feel like I have a team, that we can work
through what went well, what didn't go well,
as opposed to me seeing it all by myself. More
brains are better than one. Anytime you collaborate
with like-minded people, amazing
things can happen." n
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Education Week - January 21, 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - January 21, 2015
